Madison Square Garden: A Sports Haven

it's an all-around blow

Across the board, ad spending is down. NASCAR, once seen as a haven for ad money, has taken a 20% hit, according to former President of CBS Sports, Neal Pilson.

The fundamentals are increasingly out of whack. Today, NBA's TV deal is at least 20 times more lucrative for the league than it was 20 years ago. Who is footing the bill? The networks. Where do the networks make up their money? Advertisers. But advertisers are hibernating. See the problem?

It's not the individual fans that are not showing up, it's the corporate buyers that are driving a nail in the coffin. And the numbing effects of 9/11 on corporations' views of corporate sponsorships — especially as layoffs abound — are making this a twin horror for MSG. After all, Cantor Fitzgerald decided in 2000 not to renew its season ticket purchases, and after 9/11, the list of firms that will not renew is piling up. If they saw little value in these before 9/11, how much value would they attribute to them afterwards? It seems that some companies can no longer justify buying season tickets. Given the $400,000 price tag on skyboxes, anyone can understand why. Add to this the spiraling costs of tickets, and it explains why individual fans are also hesitating before taking out their wallets.

the big six

What does this mean to fans? Little, if anything. MSG remains one of the nicer, more exciting arenas in professional sports. While the legendary and venerable Boston Garden, Chicago Stadium, Montreal Forum, Maple Leaf Gardens, and Olympia in Detroit have made way for newer stadiums, MSG remains the only one of the six original hockey arenas. And given that it only opened in the late 1960s, it should stick around for a while.

What about the MSG network? Distribution is priceless, but when the ad dollars do not justify the investment in a TV deal, it may make more sense for Cablevision Systems to sell that unit, after all, there should not be a shortage of media players interested to broadcast Rangers, Knicks and Yankees games.

By keeping the network, Cablevision Systems is speculating that the ad market will recuperate. Otherwise, it will find itself caught between a rock and a hard place, the rock being the expensive TV deals the NBA is getting, the hard place being the weakening advertising market.

Question: What is the oldest arena being used in the National Hockey League?

Answer: The Pittsburgh Penguins play in the Mellon Arena, a.k.a. "The Igloo." It is the oldest arena in use in the NHL — it was built in 1961.